


Holy Things & Ronald Reagan

by SpicyWolfsbane



Series: postcards & hummingbirds [6]
Category: IT - Stephen King, The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: M/M, Religious Thoughts, Storis, mentions of anticommunism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 14:29:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20837015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpicyWolfsbane/pseuds/SpicyWolfsbane
Summary: "Around Boris he is Kolibri. The other side of a Janus-faced Stanley. He’s Kolibri, with cussing and orange juice mixed with stolen vodka".





	Holy Things & Ronald Reagan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Evanaissante](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evanaissante/gifts).

> Two Storis on the same day and Dani is now a jedi.  
It was proofreaded by SWEET Mardee (A_marilla). The remaining mistakes are mine.  
So, kiss Mardee and kill Dani.

"Tell me straight out, I call on you, answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and **raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears** \- would you agree to be **the architect**on such conditions? Tell, me the truth" (Dostoievksy, _The Brothers Karamazov_).

* * *

_April 1983_

_ _

Donald Uris holds a glass of water in which Stanley can see a light, almost imperceptible, stain of a rosy pastel lipstick. His mother blushes, holding a bouquet of flowers given by one of the members of their synagogue. Her blue eyes look so shiny Stan tries to steady his breath, she’s so pretty. A man a little shorter than his father talks to her, his even shorter wife by his side, a bouquet of flowers in hand, just like his mother, but her’s are petunias, while his mom’s are daisies.

He gestures, excitedly, hands in the air, a red tone running down his thick neck, the_kippah _almost falling from his head. He has a warming smile, with small teeth, and all about him reminds Stan of a weird mix of Mike and Ben, all joy and barely contained excitement, and so much gentleness. Stan wets his lips and shifts on his feet.

As they speak, both the men’s wife and Stan’s dad are silent. The woman holding the petunias has watery eyes just like his mother, and her protruding cheeks are as red as her husbands whole face and neck. Donald Uris is pale and still, the small glass of water looking even smaller on his long and hard fingers. He has manicured nails and Stan can’t stop looking at the stain of lipstick on the glass. The color looks way too bright near his dad’s pale flesh.

He tugs a curl behind his ear and smiles shyly as the man holds his hand in front of him, a farewell. The couple says their goodbyes to Rabbi Uris in astounding reverence and Stan can hear a timid sniff escaping his mother’s nose. She glances at him with slightly wide eyes and the blush on her face gets a little more intense. Her eyes found his dad’s and there’s so much __love__ and apprehension on them Stan needs to look away. Donald Uris smiles and he has sharp cheekbones.

On their way to leave the synagogue, more people stop them by the time they reach the car. His dad is polite and calm, but Stanley’s clothes itch and he’s feeling hot under the thick fabric of his suit. Maybe one of his hair pins was misplaced, and his scalp hurts a little. He opens the door for his mom and takes the backseat, seat belt on by the time Donald Uris turns on the engine. He sees the side view of his dad’s aquiline nose as he glances at Andrea before focusing on the steering wheel. It’s 1983 and the Jewish Theological Seminary decided to allow women into their rabbinic programs.

The daisies are resilient and they remain five days in a jar of water at their kitchen table.

His mom never enrolled to any of the seminar’s activities.

____________

Stanley was always a scrawny kid, long limbs and just bones. He never cared too much about looks, he couldn’t care less when Richie Tozier bragged about his growing biceps (so delusional). He was more concerned with good tailored clothes, with a well combed hair and clean nails. He still didn’t have a beard, but he could picture his adult self as having a clean shaved face, soft, and smooth and with no cuts.

But Derry was like a jungle and the survival laws of a wild place applied there. Once Henry Bowers used his face as a scrub right into the snowy sidewalk and it burnt. And it bleed. His blue and white striped polo shirt was ruined, his mom couldn’t get rid of the hideous red tone of blood. His dad solved the matter with the principal with such linear tone Stan wondered if he was even awake.

Logics applied, it was a zero-sum game. As much muscles got into Henry Bower’s clumsy body, an equal measure of pain would be cast upon Stan’s bony frame. It was unlikely for the patterns of the game to change drastically in a short lapse of time.

Stan lost more pieces of cloth through the years.

There was only one time in which he wondered, almost in a panic induced daze, how to use his body - the body God meticulously molded from clay - for a violent purpose. He wanted to shield, to protect, to attack, to guarantee his father’s safety.

Ten year-old Richie Tozier claimed Donald Uris had killed Christ.

Everyone liked Christ.

During the few sleepovers he had at Bill’s, they needed to thank Christ before eating, because Christ was the one who gave them food. When they stopped by Eddie’s, riding their shiny bikes, Sonia Kaspbrak would tell Christ was looking after Eddie. Christ also saved us all, according to Mike. He died to save us all. He got nailed to the cross, almost naked, to bleed to death, wearing a painful looking crown.

Stan briefly wondered when did his dad kill Christ. How could a man like Donald Uris nail a person to a piece of wood? What did his mother think of it? Was she near? Was the whole congregation with him during the whole ordeal?

Two years prior, when Stanley wondered how rich Christ was to feed not only the Denbroughs but also the Toziers, the Hanlons, the Kaspbraks, he asked his father who Christ was and what did he do to serve lunch and dinner to so many people. What about the logistics? Did he have a big truck, like Miss Hanscom’s boyfriend?

His dad looked at him from behind the thick frames of his glasses and asked Stanley to bring one of his books from his office shelves. It was a part of Talmud and he lectured little Stanley about a time in which the Pentateuch was followed by a new assortment of writings, a time in which a man didn’t assemble what was required of him to be the true Messiah.

In short, they didn’t believe in Christ. Maybe that was why his dad killed the guy. Maybe Christ was a guy too lazy to reconstruct Jerusalem’s Temple, brick by brick, angering his father. Stan loved his dad so much, he could forgive him. His mom could bake a casserole for the Denbroughs later.

Donald Uris was everything Stanley wanted to be.

The first time in which he used a _kippah_, his dad struggled to place the hairpins, because Stan’s hair was so curly the headgear kept falling. He cried silently, sat on a stool while Donald, patiently and meticulously, tried to place the small piece on Stan’s head. His mother’s aunt had curly hair and genetics be damned, he hated the woman with such passion

He used to watch his dad cleaning his leather shoes and shaving his face. It was the perfect clichè of the “heroic father figure”, Richie used to mock, trying to mimic Stan’s voice and failing miserably. He not only loved Donald, he adored him. He knew they weren’t supposed to adore living people as holy beings (apparently that was the whole issue with Christ), but Donald Uris was the epitome of order, in a sense to anchor Stan and his fears.

He was a polite boy, he would never brag about having the best father to his friends, mostly to Ben, Eddie and Bev because of their absent and violent male parent, respectively. He couldn’t understand how it was to live without a father figure. Donald Uris protected them, he provided for them, he only wanted the best for them.

When he lectured Stan about his commitment to the faith, he did it not only to protect and ensure the happiness on his own household, but for the sake of the community. It was like Darwin talking about cladistics and birds, and Stanley was most likely _Ichthyornis dispar._ He was a part of generation walking blindly to its own demise, too angry and too accelerated, contesting too much things and daring to break too much taboos. His dad was a product of the Silent Generation, born right after the crumble of Wall Street, witnessing the Korean War by his teens. He was well versed in how to handle chaos and Stan wanted, for a great part of his life, to let Donald deal with this for him, guide him.

Like _Ichthyornis dispar_ and its curious and revolutionary beak, Stan needed to assure his dad he had enough knowledge about what to do, enough commitment to the_ halakha_, accepting his role of the one in charge of keeping Donald’s duty on track. He needed to be a good Jew. God would want him to be a good Jew, and (his dad should never know Stan placed him above god), Donald would want him to.

Being a good jew was not only about controlling his _yetzer hara_, but having a purpose. Stanley learnt since a child that Donald and Andrea were there for him. His mom taught him how to read and write, and his dad used to do his studying schedules. Stanley never complained, and his dad never obliged him to follow. But he did because he was a conscious and dutiful boy.

He needed to show he was trustworthy.

There were days in which his blue surroundings got grey. Days in which his dad wasn’t there with them at their red mahogany table during meals, sleeping, his mom used to tell. He never got close to his dad during those days, but once he took a glimpse into his room when his mom brought him tea. The only thing he could see was his dad’s large back to the door, covered with a wooly blanked. In those days Stan felt the need to step in and hold his dad’s large face with his small hands, and kiss his forehead and tell him everything would be okay, that he would have a bright future to make him proud.

Just like _Ichthyornis dispair_, evolving.

This is why it was so frustrating back when Georgie Denbrough died. The way his dad made that cold comment to his mother during breakfast, that if only the Denbroughs took enough care of their toddler…

…Or, more recently, the way he started to look at Boris when he came over.

Boris is confusing, like his middle name and the eastern european languages he speaks. Stan blushes, thinking about the time in which Boris grabbed him by his shoulders, shaking him lightly, a faked annoyed expression on his mouth and a tiny smile “No, Kolibri. Is different!”

For him, ukrainian and russian were just the same thing. Polish too, maybe, but with a different alphabet. His heart felt funny at the way Boris was trying to explain things to him in a serious tone, but holding back his own laughter.

They started to have English class together during the past year, when Boris popped out of nowhere in Derry, a couple of pounds thinner and a couple of less smiling moments. At first it sounded like a joke, Richie Tozier having a secret foreign brother… Richie himself being, in some sense, a foreign too. But once they were all gathered at the Toziers living room to watch another stupid horror movie and Bill - with his sad big blue eyes - asked Maggie about the mysterious brother… The way in which she smiled even before answering - and the way Bill’s shoulders_ tensed_ \- … they all knew that this time Richie wasn’t lying.

It wasn’t nearly as hard to befriend Boris as Stan thought it would be. In fact, they got so close to the point in which Stanley was caught looking around the cafeteria, searching for his scrawny frame covered in oversized clothes in a monotone shade of gray, black or navy blue, looking like teenage Vlad with a particular distaste for american literature. (_Don’t call this garbage literature, Kolibri. Go read Pushkin_). 

Oh, and _Kolibri_.

How many postcards he already got? How many hummingbirds could actually exist out there? He invited Boris over a few times to do english homework, having a curious feeling at the back of his mind that Boris’ knowledge of english was far more advanced than what he let it show, asking for him to explain such basic grammar stuff that Stan couldn’t even feel bothered to scowl those dark warm eyes and that _possibly fake_ doubtful face…

Boris used to bring him a postcard here and there, leaving another one on his lockers here and there… Always hummingbirds, or kolibris, once Boris thought the english word for said birds name was stupid. He loved to playfully banter with Stan about Cold War related things, always stressing out how superior the USSR was, even if he himself would call shit upon Yuri Andropov and his political decisions. When Reagan launched the Star Wars project it fuelled Boris to the point in which all of their corridor talks and their time at Stan’s would revolve around galaxies and satellites and an imminent stupid war.

“Is made up. There’s no moon landing,” Boris shook his head, a pencil behind his left ear, and lots of notes and books around him on Stanley’s bed “Your government lie because Gagarin was the _first man_ in space.”

“Armstrong was the _first man_ on the moon.”

“No moon landing, Kolibri.”

“Are you telling me Apollo 11 was a lie?” Stanley would like to tease, pointing his own pencil at Boris “Think about your words, old man.”

“Apollo 11 was the third landing at the moon,” Boris would reply, nonchalant “The first one was soviet, back in 1959. The second one _was also soviet_, in 1966.”

“Third landing, first man in the moon.”

“No first man in the moon. Flag is waving with _no air_. Is made up.”

They would gather by the radio at the Uris kitchen to listen to Ronald Reagan, sometimes watching his head with lots of hair gel on the television. Reagan would speak about anti-ballistic systems and toppling the soviet power, while Boris would scrunch his nose at such claims, muttering things Stanley didn’t know about mutual mass destruction, cheap science fiction and how Ted Kennedy seemed to be the only american man with a brain. (_And you, Kolibri, and you, you read Tolstoi)_.

Stan would rather watch Boris complaints than taking part on them, the boy seemed like a walking encyclopedia, and that was a lot, considering how much effort Stan had with his own education. He would like to look at Boris, watching how his pale cheeks got pink, thick brows knitted together, talking almost as fast as Eddie, mumbling some russian words here and there when the excitement was palpable (he would often call Reagan a “svin’ya”).

During the times in which Stan was watching television with his parents, he would pay extra care to anything related to Reagan and his galactic dreams of war, just to grant Boris with new facs and teasing, rejoicing with his annoyed and playful reactions, finding notes inside his backpack while back at home.

**“Moon landing is FAKE! LIES!”**

Once Donald Uris asked him if the Toziers had in fact adopted the communist kid.

Andrea smiled gently and tried to say that a kid was too young to call himself communist, or even capitalist for that matter. But Donald wasn’t listening, rather focused on Stanley, waiting for his reply.

“I don’t know, but I guess they will.”

“Doesn’t sound like something carefully planned and debated.”

“He’s Richie’s biological brother.”

Donald didn’t answer him, eyeing him for almost a minute before turning his attention back to his newspaper. Stan felt his face heat up, just like when stopped running away from the synagogue during his _bar mitzvah_, his mom and her shaking hands grabbing his shoulders, bringing him back inside, receiving that look from his father. He had placed his friends above his family. It was Georgie back then and the thought that it would be _Boris_ by now made Stan flinch.

Boris, who made him feel uneasy and probably out of place and anchored at the same time, with his commie flag back at his room at the Toziers, and his stolen bottles of orange juice and vodka, ignoring the later during most part of the time because Stan wasn’t very fond of alcohol.

Why would his dad point out how much crocked and yellowish and probably full of cavities Boris’ teeth looked like? Why would he bring up his young adult years and MacCarthy and how dangerous times were and continued to be with the “red land on the East” during their morning meals? He would talk about Stalin and Ribbentrop and antisemitism... about _gulags_ and the Holocaust and how similar evil things could be… and Stan would feel sick. Why would he cast upon a _child_ the crimes and ideologies of a _nation_?

Stanley wanted to talk about Boris to his father. About how smart he was, about all the languages he could speak (_Kolibri, do you know that romanian sounds like italian and portuguese lovechild?_), his obsession with Dostoievsky and the fact that he could actually sew threadbare clothes quite decently.

He would like to show his dad his postcards and tell him how it made Stan _feel_ and how it couldn’t be a problem, how it shouldn’t be a problem… to ask him, _please_, for it to not be a problem. He was a dutiful jew and they weren’t orthodox… One day things could change. Stan could lead that change and his dad could be proud of his efforts for the community, for_ all_ of the community.

In the meantime, being two people was exhausting.

Around Boris he is Kolibri. The other side of a Janus-faced Stanley. He’s Kolibri, with cussing and orange juice mixed with stolen vodka. Kolibri with its fast wings, moving frantically in excitement and anxiety. Kolibri with a big heart. Was Boris aware that a hummingbird’s heart is proportionally bigger than any other bird, representing 15% of his total body mass? Beating at least two thousand times per minute?

In a big and strong hummingbird’s heart, Stan likes to think there’s enough space for Boris _and_ his father.

* * *

“No matter. He is holy. He carries in his heart the secret of renewal for all: that power which will, at last, establish truth on the earth, and all men will be holy and love one another, and there will be no more rich nor poor, no exalted nor humbled, but all will be as the children of God, and the true Kingdom of Christ will come.’ That was the **dream** in Alyosha's heart” (Dostoievksy, _The Brothers Karamazov_).

**Author's Note:**

> Stan is a conservative jew in this. If you share his religion and if I made a mistake, pretty please, message me. It wasn't my intention to mess up the facts of your religion. I tried to do my research, but the history of Judaism is quite confusing. Oh, and I know that that decision regarding women described at the beginning of the chapter took place by October 1983, but for the sake of the plot I moved to April 1983.


End file.
